With all the financial turbulence and negative sentiment in the air, now might be a good time to explore some art NFTs. Overhyped PFP drops are exciting and can be profitably volatile, but collections running into the thousands will be more difficult to sell out at the moment.
When it comes to 1/1s and smaller sized art collections, though, nothing much has changed as artists continue to go about their work, and there will always be interest from collectors.
Tezos
The Tezos blockchain has a thriving NFT community and is becoming well known as a network towards which artists gravitate. Looking at 30 day sales volumes across blockchains, Tezos is up by 49%, while Ethereum volume has dropped by 78%. You can also find Fxhash, a Tezos-based generative art platform, growing its volume by 88% over 30 days.
While Objkt and Teia are the major Tezos marketplaces to keep an eye on, Versum is an alternative platform with a heavily art-focused approach, and for some great resources, artist and coder NFTBiker has created a suite of Tezos NFT tools.
Solana and Cardano
On the Solana blockchain, head over to Exchange or Formfunction, both of which are marketplaces specializing in 1/1 art. And on Cardano, there is Artano, a community-curated art NFT marketplace.
Pixel Blossom
Pixel Blossom was created by and features Daniel Taylor, who illustrated Omnimorphs, this project has brought together twelve well known crypto artists in one place, and utilizes a gradual, pixel-by-pixel reveal process. You can pick up Pixel Blossom NFTs on secondary, but the project is also a useful introduction to the artists themselves, all of whom are great starting points from which to explore the world of NFT art.
Art Blocks and Pace Verso
For background, Pace Gallery is a bricks-and-mortar contemporary art gallery with nine locations in major cities around the world. Last year it launched its own NFT platform, called Pace Verso, and is working with some very famous names, including Jeff Koons for his upcoming first NFT project, Moon Phases.
Pace is now also linking up with the exceptional generative-art NFT platform, Art Blocks, a leading player in 2021’s NFT art boom, and home to Tyler Hobbs’ iconic Fidenza collection.
The partnership between Pace and Art Blocks will release new work from a variety of artists, which will feature in exhibitions around the world. The first collaborative launch is scheduled to take place on June 21st, and is called Petro National. It’s the work of tech-savvy artist John Gerrard, and is going to consist of 196 unique NFTs, which will be up for sale in a descending auction.
Photography NFTs
Although photography can be found across the major NFT marketplaces, such as in the OpenSea photography section and on Foundation (do a photography search), there are also a few more closely photography-specialized marketplaces and communities.
Take a look at Quantum, Ephimera and Sloika for some NFT platforms that are centered almost entirely around photography.
Poetry NFTs
Most people associate artistic NFTs with the visual arts, but that isn’t the only use case, and there are communities growing that use NFTs as a medium for written work, particularly poetry.
TheVERSEverse is a poetry NFT gallery that is onboarding writers to web3, and exploring how tech and storytelling link up.
Async Art is an NFT platform for the creation, collection and trading of art, music, and some poetry, taking a multimedia approach.
And to further explore the crossover between NFTs, poetry and other kinds of writing, a good point to navigate from is Crypto Poetry, which is a hub for writers who utilize blockchain technology. As is the case with most corners of the NFT world, Twitter is the primary place where news circulates and connections are made.
Sam is a qualified journalist from the UK who covers NFTs, Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency world.
He believes NFTs are about far more than just JPEGs, and web3 is going to be transformative, but recognizes the value in a good quality meme and a well-drawn ape.
